The Social Darwinist is someone who believes that the Darwinist theory of evolution — i.e. "survival of the fittest" to oversimplify it — should be applied to people, and sometimes entire societies or nations. To the Social Darwinist, all life is a struggle for survival in which the strongest naturally prosper at the expense of the weak — and it is right and natural that they should do so, because that's just the way things are, and/or natural law is Above Good and Evil. Such characters rarely concede that their chances for survival may have started higher than others due to reasons such as inherited wealth or social prestige. They typically state that We Have Become Complacent and stupid, and want to remove weakness and stupidity from society. It may seem to some that because humans aren't currently having wars/disaster and humans aren't endangered as a species that evolution in humans has ceased altogether.

The Straw Meritocrat: Basically a Straw Nihilist without the overt craziness. This first type believes in Social Darwinism, which misinterprets the idea of evolution and natural selection and holds that people who rise to the top in society, by whatever means, are automatically "superior" - even going so far as to praise the evils ofover-ambitiousness and condemn kind behavior. Frequently this will be held even in settings where the people in charge are clearly getting there through Nepotism, or otherwise as a result of luck and privilege. Despite it being nothing more than a Theme Park Version, this philosophy is still frequently held by both fictional characters and quite a few Real Life "successful" people.

The Jerk Justifier: The fourth type is simply selfish and uses Social Darwinism as just a justification for sociopathic behavior. This character may not actually believe it and may not even care, but finds Social Darwinism to be a convenient justification or excuse for the way they were going to behave anyway. Often overlaps with Straw Hypocrite, especially if he's a coward who will immediately resort to "un-Darwinist" cheating if he's ever exposed as inferior himself.

In general, the fictional Social Darwinist is a Narcissist who mostly just tries to justify his own superiority over everyone else.
If the Social Darwinist doesn't suffer a Karmic Death, the heroes "disprove" his might-makes-right philosophy by demonstrating the The Power of Friendshipnote In fact, actual evolutionary scientists posit that The Power of Friendship and general co-operation as the best survival strategy for most people most of the time, not to mention an evolutionary strategy that the human species specifically evolved to exploit: either by ganging up and beating the crap out of him and his cronies, or by the leader of the group (often the All-Loving Hero) doing it himself while repeatedly driving home that he's fighting for his friends. A particularly profound way this to happen is to have the character beaten by a character who is either a visible minority the Social Darwinist considers inferior or has glaring physical or mental handicaps.

Note that Charles Darwin himself would not be amused by all these people and the way they interpreted his works; he proposed nothing of the sort, and the idea predated him by centuries. (And while Darwin did believe that the Caucasian race had evolved further than other races, his racism was based not on arrogance or sociopathy; it was simply where his research led him. At the time, his insistence that all humans were the same species was controversial.note Back then, basically everyone assumed from the outset that Caucasians were superior. Whether or not the other races were homo sapiens was an actual issue.) You never see a social Darwinist treating societies in the same way a real Darwinist treats species: Darwinists are interested in maintaining biodiversity (so the greatest number of traits are available to "throw at the wall and see what sticks" when a change in habitat occurs), and Darwinism is a description of the way species work, not a prescription for which species should live or die. See Appeal to Nature for the fallacy of using "nature" to prescribe any behavior (moral, immoral or not), and also see the Analysis page for this trope for more information on that. This did not stop Social Darwinism from becoming a fairly mainstream philosophy from the Victorian era to WWII, when it became associated with the Nazis; this association contributed greatly to its loss of popularity. However, the emergence of culture war politics in the late 20th century appears to have won new adherents to the philosophy.

Code:Breaker: Though not yet outright stated, Ogami's brother implies this is his group's ideal when he wonders why Ogami is protecting an ordinary (?) human.

Emperor Charles zi Britannia in Code Geass has this philosophy — though it applies at its most ruthless to his children, as, if any are weak, he deigns that they deserve to die. The protagonist, a deposed prince of the empire, directly opposes this attitude, as it's what cost him his mother and crippled his little sister — while Charles did nothing. Subverted, as this was all a facade by the emperor himself.

Not really; it's more that he tries to use the notion that might makes everything better in an attempt to justifyself-interest (in his mind, everything's alright as long as he wins). Lelouch calls him out on it in episode 21 of R2 when he points out that his parents wouldn't have cared if their plan did fail and they lost their children for real, remarking that they only wanted to have an excuse to feel proud of themselves for having kept their family.

It may not seem so simple, but Charles likely does perceive himself to be at the top of society, and he does argue against Lelouch that, like him, he follows the mentality that the ends justify the means, but they differ in that Lelouch's goal is for the people of the world to care about each other (so that they wouldn't take advantage of each other again), whereas Charles acts for himself, and Suzaku later opposes him for taking advantage of other people just like (if not moreso than) Lelouch when those with power should protect those incapable of acting, recognizing that Britannian society isn't such an ideal world.

Vicious of Cowboy Bebop shows shades of this, particularly in his attitude towards those who lose their ruthless side. Notably, he assassinates his former Mentor Mao Yenrai for attempting to make peace with another Syndicate, (then dismissively describes him as "a beast who lost his fangs") denounces the Elders of the Red Dragon as "corpses that can't fight," and demands to know why Spike Spiegel, his personal and romantic rival, survived his exile if he's no longer as cold-blooded and ruthless as Vicious.

In Darker Than Black, Amber's organization "Evening Primrose" is sort of the Contractor Resistance movement, and while it's not clear to what extent Amber herself has this viewpoint, her obsessive follower Maki definitely does, and in one scene, he actually refers to Contractors as something like a "master race". The interquel villain Harvest is also an insane social darwinist, and has several lines about "the next stage in evolution".

Light Yagami in Death Note develops from a Well-Intentioned Extremist into this trope, and he happens to be the protagonist. He believes that by using the Death Note to pick off criminals and the unpleasant, he can make the world consist of good people only. As he puts it, if Kira (his mass-murdering alter ego) is caught, then he's evil; if he wins and rules the world, he's righteous. Naturally, at the end, when Near gets the upper hand and decisively proves Light is Kira in a room full of cops and FBI agents, Light refuses to accept defeat. Light tries desperately to justify his actions as something they should agree with and then making a scene of himself when they don't buy it. That is, when pushed to a corner, Light abandons Social Darwinism and shifts to a mentality of "I am always justified no matter what."

Dragon Ball Z: Vegeta believes the Saiyan race is the most powerful in the universe and that Earthlings are weak and inferior to them. His transition to Majin Vegeta is largely because this belief, saying (in the English dub) "It's survival of the fittest. The strong will survive, and the weak shall perish!" Even Goku pointing out that during their battle they may have inadvertently revived Majin Buu is dismissed by Vegeta, saying (though he hardly believes it himself) that the two of them have evolved far beyond even Kaioshin's expectations to the point that Majin Buu is not a concern anymore (though he is quickly proven to be very wrong on that). Vegeta once executed his partner Nappa for being too weak to fight against Goku, a "commoner", and once in a filler flashback, he shrugged off Nappa telling him that it was Freeza that wiped out their home, responding that everyone that was killed by Freeza (which included his own father, the King of Saiyans) simply didn't have the strength to survive.

Dragon Ball Super: Zen'O thought there were too many universes, and was planning to erase the eight universes with the weakest average individuals from existence before Goku convinces him to hold a tournament where the winners get to survive.

There are Father and his Homunculi, and Kimblee, who is an ideological and philosophical Social Darwinist. He doesn't believe that weak people should be automatically killed (though he does enjoy blowing up people regardless of how helpless they are), but he believes violence is the only way to solve philosophical disputes; whoever is alive at the end of the day was right.

There are also non-villain examples. Olivier Mira Armstrong is General Badass and leads the Briggs fortress border troops, who are the most badass soldiers in all Amestris, up against the freezing conditions and an extremely aggressive Drachma. Her credo is "survival of the fittest", which she applied to everyone, including herself, and sticks to it:

"Don't you get it? My men aren't going to come and rescue me. Because if I die here, I'm not worthy to lead them anyway."

The Green King, Nagare Hisui, in K: Return of Kings has this philosophy (Struggler variant) as his basis for wanting to give everyone in the world superpowers and turn real life into one big free-for-all fighting game. When he explains his view to the Silver King, who has close, first-hand experience with Those Wacky Nazis, the Silver King recognizes it for what it is and refuses to join him, at which point Nagare declares war.

Lord Fezearl Ezelcant from Mobile Suit Gundam AGE believes that the only way to create a perfect world is to wipe out the weak. It doesn't matter to Ezelcant if you're caught in the middle of an attack on a Federation colony, suffering from the overwhelming poverty within Vagan or dying from diseases due to Mars Ray exposure. If you do not have the will to survive and the willpower to do ANYTHING to have the means to do so, you don't belong in his utopia and you deserve to die. What makes this hilarious is that he states that he thinks peaceful and kindhearted people will come out of this, rather than hardened survivors. Thus proving that Social Darwinists don't always understand the very science they're putting their faith in.

The Leader of the PLANTS from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Chairman Patrick Zala, actively believes that Coordinators, genetically modified humans, are a different species from Natural-born humans. This leads him to actively pursue the death of every single Natural on the planet Earth. (His aggression towards Naturals likely stemmed from his wife being killed in an event before the series by the Earth Alliance, who was not pleased that Coordinators had been able to grow their own food.)

Rudolf von Goldenbaum from Legend of Galactic Heroes firmly believes in this trope. One of the most infamous laws he passed after he established the Galactic Empire was the so-called "Inferior Genes Exclusion Law", which essentially involved the killing of people deemed to possess "inferior genes".

Mazinger Z: The Dragon Baron Ashura is a Jerkass Justifier who uses the "survival of the fitest" like an excuse/justification to make whatever he wants. In a story arc of the Gosaku Ota manga alternate continuity Baron Ashura manages kidnapping Kouji and tries to talking Kouji in joining him (or her. It. Whatever). When Kouji retorts he has no interest in becoming a criminal, Ashura goes in a What Is Evil?Might Makes Right angry rant, uttering that in the nature the weak succumbs to the will of the strong and the strong survives. That is how the world always did, does and will work, and "good", "bad", "peace", "justice"... are meaningless, empty words human beings came up with because they are too coward to accept reality and too weak to protect themselves.

Gihren Zabi of Mobile Suit Gundam. He believes that the strong should rule and the weak should simply get out of the way. This idea governs most of his actions throughout the show, and lead to his ultimately assassinating his father and seizing control of Zeon for himself.

Tomonori Komori from Narutaru is a sociopathic teenager who finds the modern world overly complicated, and so he intends to use his Mon to kill the educated and the sickly, effectively turning things back to the Stone Age, to create what he claims would be a healthy, pure society. Ironically, it's revealed some time after his death that he had a sickly mother he was taking care of, and that he wasn't the healthiest of boys himself. He must've been bitter.

Captain Morgan seems to think that the fact he struggled to earn his rank gives him the right to kill anyone who questions his orders or opposes his methods.

Arlong the fishman, who thinks the physically superior fishmen should rule over the weak and puny humans. He was also subject to this trope from the other side, having been a victim of racism since he was a child.

The Celestial Dragons basically run around getting away with whatever they please because they can. Whatever they please includes murder, slavery, with the government's and Marines' fill support even if they're otherwise illegal.

The philosophy of Rurouni Kenshin'sBig Bad Makoto Shishio is that "the flesh of the weak is the food of the strong" — and he drives his point home by taking a bite out of the hero. He is inevitably defeated, but afterwards, Kenshin observes that his victory has not truly proven anything — and that, if the one in the right is merely the strongest warrior, then Shishio was correct all along...

In Saint Beast, Zeus believes that angels who are not "beautiful and strong" are not fit to serve him.

Esdeath in Akame ga Kill!. It's only natural for the weak to perish, after all. To her, the feelings of the "weak" are utterly incomprehensible and absurd. Exactly how much was the result of her upbringing in the harsh winter north or inherent in her very nature is a matter of debate. In fact, the reason she's in love with Tatsumi so much is because he constantly manages to find ways to avoid her killing him.

Pokémon: The First Movie is a somewhat strange example of the trope, due to the shifting of roles between the Japanese and English versions of the film. Both Mew and Mewtwo have shades of this in the Japanese version, though it is Mew, the hero, that is more of a Darwinist; in fact, it's Mew that offers the suggestion that the two sides fight without their abilities. In the English version, Mew shows none of these traits, leaving Mewtwo as the sole Darwinist.

Paul, Ash's main rival in the Diamond and Pearl arc, follows this philosophy to a T and it downright pisses off Ash. His very first appearance involves him capturing three Starly, finding which one has the best moveset and stats, and releasing the other two. About halfway through the series he released Chimchar for losing in a double battle, which would come back to bite ihm in the League tournament as Ash's Infernape. Interestingly, Paul's personality and actions are very similar to the part of the fandom interested in the metagame and tournaments, which makes one wonder if he was meant to be a Take That! toward them.

Demon of Digimon V-Tamer 01, who holds the contradictory views that monsters should live by instinct alone and that it is a monster's duty to destroy weaker creatures wherever they can be found, regardless of how impractical this is. He's above no methods in his pursuit of the latter, including lying about his motivations and has gone so far as to find ways to destroy other creatures out of his reach who had virtually no effect on his life to no benefit to himself whatsoever simply because he knew they existed.

Kiriha Aonuma of Digimon Xros Wars starts off as this due to misinterpreting his father's last words. He sees Taiki as a worthy opponent and allies with Nene because of their powerful Digimon. The second arc brings him to realize that he misunderstood his father, accepting the relatively weak Dracomon as he understands that strength doesn't just mean power or force. A villainous example comes in the form of Dorbickmon, who believes that dragon Digimon (a group in which he includes all reptilian Digimon) are superior to and should lord over all other Digimon due to being more powerful.

Several superpowered characters living in Academy City in A Certain Magical Index believe the powerful rule and the weak are just fodder and playthings for them. Shizuri Mugino used to be like this, but after her Heel–Face Turn, she's done a full 180 turn in attitude. Having grown to love and respect Shiage Hamazura, the Badass Normal who managed to defeat her, she learns about how Academy City allocates funds to people with promising powers while denying them to people with weak powers or none (like Shiage), assuming they are worthless. Mugino gets angry and declares that Shiage may not have any powers but he is definitely not worthless.

This is what the Second Stage Children believes in Inazuma Eleven GO: Chrono Stone, they are of the Evilutionary Biologist variety as they believe that anyone who isn't blessed with the Second Stage Children genes should be killed and they are therefore in the way of the evolution of mankind.

In Lord Marksman and Vanadis, Duke Thenardier, one of the main antagonists of the first five volumes, is this due to his upbringing by his father. He killed all of his siblings to rise to power, and holds no sympathy for anyone he considers weak besides his son, which is why he decides to raze Alsace to the ground in Volume 1 and levies ridiculously high taxes on anyone he considers useless or weak.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica: This is Kyoko's philosophy and she sees magical girls as the apex predator. Within magical girls, a weaker one must yield their territory to a stronger one or die.

In Animal Land, Jyu completely believes in the "survival of the fittest" notion wherein strong animals prey on and can do anything towards weaker animals. He is totally against anything that goes against this notion, such as animals working together, as he sees it as a lie to the natural order of things.

Satsuki: All students have the right to attack all other students! Secret meetings, scheming, backstabbing, anything goes! Seven days from now, reach the schoolyard alive, and then use your strength to lay claim on your social standing once again!

Turns out it is a bit mroe complicated than that; her reasoning for promoting this mentality was to have the strongest allies to stop her mother's inane scheme. She needed strong-willed people for her plan to work. She relaxes on this much more at the end and she can live a normal life.

In One-Punch Man, Dr. Genus was, even as a child, disgusted by the weakness of man. His goal is to take over the world and replace the human race with his army of genetically engineered monsters. He gets really shocked when he discovers Saitama's incredible power came from training and not genetics or anything of the sort. When his most powerful experiment is effortlessly destroyed after failing to do any real damage to Saitama, he has a change of heart and decides to open a restaurant.

Suiryu, a very strong competitor in the martial arts tournament Saitama enters, is revealed to have this as his mindset, though it's unclear if he falls under Straw Meritocrat, Jerk Justifier, Struggler, or a combination of the above: He believes that any death of non-natural causes was because that person was too weak to survive it and thus all non-natural deaths are deserved. As a result, he comes off as a sociopath, showing zero concern for anyone but himself, as until Saitama, he had yet to encounter anyone better at fighting than him. Because of Suiryu's attitude, he has nothing but disdain for heroes and doesn't understand why they would rescue weak people to the point of self-sacrifice, when they should be protecting themselves. These ideas particularly offend Suiryu's second-round opponent Snek, who is a professional hero and takes his job seriously.

Laxus had this philosophy before being beaten by Natsu and Gajeel and realizing that deep down he wasn't much of a Social Darwinist to begin with. He literally cast a spell that would destroy anyone he saw as an enemy, and not a single person was hurt in the town. This includes the very guild members he claimed were "weak".

Holy Corpse Rising: Amala and her mooks enslave a village and confiscate all the food, killing anybody who attempts to take some. However, if anybody actually succeeds in taking some, she rewards them by inviting them into her inner circle. As she puts it, only people with the strength and will to eat deserve to eat.

Magneto has some moments of social darwinism, calling mutants Homo sapiens superior (or the even less accurate Homo superior, implying mutants are a separate species entirely). What makes his views especially ironic is the fact that it was born out of the persecution he suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

Professor Xavier in X-Men Noir is an actual psychiatrist, and as such his spin on this is unique: he believes sociopaths are the next stage in human behavioral evolution. Chief of Detectives Eric Magnus, meanwhile, believes the criminal element is hereditary and genetic — and has to be contained or eliminated for the good of society. Emma Frost, an old student of Xavier's, combines the two ideas as warden at Genosha Bay, but also feels sociopathy is communicable.

The aforementioned Apocalypse's adoptive father Baal, leader of the Sandstormer raiders, was a big believer in "survival of the fittest" and passed on this worldview to his son.

The Red Skull abandoned Nazism, but he still believes in social Darwinism.

Venus Bluegenes in Rogue Trooper fits this trope in her initial appearance. She believes that GIs are inherently superior to humans, and killed the rest of her crew as she thought them inferior.

Niles Caulder turns out to be this at the end of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run. In fact, it's revealed at the end that he's planning a giant worldwide cataclysm that will enable the human race to emerge stronger as a result.

The Norwegian cult comic The Great Four: When the Dead Awaken features a social darwinist Big Bad who is planning to start a new world war using steampunk gasoline technology. When the heroes arrive to stop him, he offers them an ultimatum: If he defeats them, they will join him in his conquest. If they defeat him, he has a self-destruct ready to destroy his Supervillain Lair and will let them pull the switch, because if he was weak enough to be defeated his works weren't worth anything anyway. He actually seems content with losing until the heroes decide to leave the lair intact so his gasoline-driven undead minions can continue to 'live'.

In the New 52, the villain Harvest collects superpowered teens and forces them to fight each other to the death in an event he calls "The Culling", so that he can determine the strongest and rule over the survivors, who become his Ravagers. While Harvest is impressed by Superboy's power, he declares him a failure because of he will not kill his defeated foes. Later it's revealed that his real motivation is Fantastic Racism. He hates metahumans in general because his son was killed by a metahuman.

Superman villain Manchester Black overlaps this with Might Makes Right. He and his group are the world's most powerful super-humans, so they should naturally have authority over the rest of mankind and are able to force them to obey their own morals and laws. Superman twists this trope around by not only being stronger than Black, but by demonstrating why putting this theory into practice is a VERY bad idea.

Bigby of Fables has shades of this. In "Werewolves of the Heartland", it's suggested he has less of an issue with the fact that werewolves are attacking, hunting and eating humans, and more the "cowardly", half-assed way they go about it. A core tenet of his personal philosophy is that it's right to return any attack on either yourself or the people close to you ten-fold, making your enemies so terrified of a counterattack that they fear you into leaving you alone, citing Israel's bombing of civilian targets as an example. Don't bother asking - being the The Big Bad Wolf, Bigby is the source of a lot of Values Dissonance.

Fan Fiction

Megami No Hanabira has the Chaos representative for the story, Shusui Naito. Naito holds a variation of the meritocratic sort: while he believes that the ones on top deserve to rule, the ones presently ruling are an exception. Society, according to Naito, has created a self-perpetuating system that is a farce of a meritocracy, where people get in because of arbitrary things like inherited wealth, skin color, gender, or otherwise, and otherwise-deserving people never get the chance to shine. While the man might have a point, it's hard to take his side when his fix for the problem is to unleash the Demon Summoning Program to everyone and ignite what amounts to the mother of all race/class wars.

In a contrasting portrayal when compared to the usual, in the Avatar fanfic, Children of Gaia, Earth is portrayed as one, plus Well-Intentioned Extremist, always working the evolution to benefit the strongest and don't even mind people mining her (a rather interesting subversion of Gaia's Lament). So, she gets really offended when she learns about how Eywa rules the Na'vi and actually agrees with humans on their policy over them.

The Immortal Game has both Titan and his Dragon, General Esteem, who both believe that power is the only thing that matters, and that only those with power have the right to rule.

Ace Combat The Equestrian War has Red Cyclone as a Racism Theorist; he wants to create a world where only the strong live while the weak are mercilessly slaughtered.

Fluttercruel gives a big speech claiming that kindness and compassion go against nature's law, as they cause the unworthy to survive by compelling others to waste time helping them.

Strife, Anthropomorphic Personification of Natural Selection, a more realistic version of the Social Darwinist. She is a Blood Knight who has no intention of letting her prey escape, and she knows that she is far more powerful than any mortal, but she at least fights battles personally instead of wiping her foes out instantly, because she believes every being has the right to prove itself and fight for its survival. When she's not being an antagonist, her usual duty is to help populations survive by engineering situations that force them to improve and grow stronger. She is disgusted by beings who wantonly kill without giving the victims at least a chance at survival, saying that spits on her Concept.

As a child, Queen Chrysalis was taught by her father, a hunter, about the nature of predator and prey. She took it to heart, using the logic of survival of the fittest to justify her having to drain others of their emotions to survive. She considers Changelings to be the ultimate predator, since they can feed on the love of any being, and believes they, and by extension her, are destined to rule over all other beings.

The Griffins used to have this mindset, but gave up on it when they realized it was crippling them. They explain that only allowing the strong to rise prevented their smarter members from expressing their valuable ideas. Also, working together and with other races helped them achieve things that even the strongest of them couldn't do on their own.

In The Great Slave King, the strong ruling the weak ends up becoming the Slave King's modus operandi.

King Sombra declares he will purge the Crystal Empire of the weak and useless.

Godzilla Junior's evil Mirror Universe counterpart considers himself and his teammates to be the top of the food chain, with their power giving them the right to do whatever they want and kill whoever they want. While there are heroes that are more powerful than him, he applies his intellectual superiority by calling in his allies to gang up on them and win with teamwork.

In Harmony Theory, Nightmare Umbra attacks people to force them to prove their strength and worthiness to survive by fighting back. She eventually judges the entire world to be unworthy and wants to drive the ponies to extinction.

In Child of the Storm, this trope is Baron Zemo's main characteristic. He believes that it is natural for the strong to rule the weak, and when accused by T'Challa of being A Nazi by Any Other Name, is insulted, as he views the Nazis as having been fools obsessed with cosmetics like race — as he puts it, while they would have looked down on T'Challa just because he's black, Zemo sees him as an equal because of his skills.

Lucius Malfoy also comes into this way of thinking later on, for the most part shedding his normal Fantastic Racism. He still thinks wizards are naturally superior as a whole to Muggles, but because of their power, not their blood, and admits that there are plenty of the latter who can — through gaining powers or natural skill — come to exceed wizards.

Paul, as per canon, thinks the only Pokémon worth anything are those he considers strong enough.

The Bloodline King and his minions believe bloodliners to be stronger than baseline humans. They further believe that because of this power, they deserve to rule the world, and have control over both Pokémon and ordinary humans.

Orre has a serious case of this.

The Reset Version of Sabrina is this as well, though she handles it a bit differently. Sabrina's social darwinism isn't restricted to 'Superior Races' and recognizes strength in fields beyond raw strength, such as superior intelligence or artistic talent. She also doesn't operate under a doctrine that losing automatically means you are weak. In her eyes as long as you are skilled at something, you are fine. If not, you deserve death.

A straight example appears in the fourth movie in the form of Captain Gutt, who believes that the best way to survive in an ever-changing world is by pillaging and plundering and is such a Narcissist that he openly claims that he is the best because he can and will do it.

Kron from the Disney movie Dinosaur is implied to be something like this. He even lampshades this when the herd is fleeing from the carnosaurs.

Aladar: (Concerning the elders in the back) But the others in the back! They'll never make it!

Kron: Then they'll slow down the predators!

Aladar: (Outraged) You can't sacrifice them like this!

King, the leader of the Rogues and the Big Bad of Alpha and Omega 2: A Howl-iday Adventure, is a wolf who espouses such views. He is obsessed with the purity and strength of himself and his Rogues and is quick to mock any perceived weakness.

Frozen: In A Frozen Heart, Prince Hans's father simply and coldly regards his youngest son with utter disgust and contempt, comparing him to a "weakling" and an idiotic coward who couldn't stand up to the abuse he and his older sons throw at Hans. To him, any of his sons displaying a softer side is a sign of weakness, so it must by countered by forcing them to be "toughened up in the Westergaard mold", that is, to be indoctrinated from a young age that the strong have a right to pick on the weak. And from his POV, Hans being against his family's violent methods of controlling the kingdom has made him the Black Sheep of the Westergaard clan. To counter his youngest son's weak nature, he encourages his older sons to bully and torment Hans at his expense, which to him is a "sign of strength", and believes it's all "good politics" so Hans could be forced to use his family's methods of controlling the subjects, despite what Hans has to say or object. By the end of A Frozen Heart, his dad'sinfluence has slowly corrupted Hans into becoming an unfeeling and ruthless man, driving him to dehumanize everyone (including Elsa, Anna and the Duke of Weselton) in his quest for power.

In A Bug's Life, Hopper and his grasshoppers are basically a pack of smug bullies who terrorise an ant colony into giving them food on the basis that they're bigger and stronger bugs. We also see Hopper applying his brutal logic towards his underlings as well and murdering them just because they voiced a desire for something else other than what he decided. He lives by instilling fear towards everyone. Their beliefs get turned on them in the end when the ants rise up against them, and Hopper meets his well-deserved death at the hands of a predator even bigger and stronger than him: a common goldfinch.

The Sword in the Stone invokes this. Merlin tells Arthur that the concept does exist in the animal kingdom (he has transformed himself and the boy into fish for the day), but that among humans it's counterbalanced by the potential of the weak to use their "intellect" to outwit the strong. When they get attacked by a gigantic fanged pike, Merlin has Arthur prove his point by using a discarded arrow to jam the bigger fish's mouth open, distracting it from biting down long enough for Arthur to escape.

Films — Live-Action

The villain of the 1945 film The Spiral Staircase cites this as his reason for killing women with any sort of physical defect, such as the mute heroine:

"There is no room in this whole world for imperfection. What a pity my father didn't live to see me become strong, to see me dispose of the weak and imperfect of the world, whom he detested. He would have admired me for what I am going to do."

In Wall Street, Gordon Gekko's philosophy is Social Darwinism of the economic kind. Several of his quotes are "It's a Zero Sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses" or "In my book you either do it right or you get eliminated". His entire "Greed is good" speech is of Social Darwinist nature. However, he only applies this trope to companies: weak people don't die, they just don't succeed in business, which is a fairly basic tenet of capitalism. Of course, he's more than willing to cheat to win if he can't succeed on pure talent (although, given his character, he'd probably just attribute that to his intellectual superiority).

In First Knight, the villain Malagant is a firm believer in this, and cannot understand his rival King Arthur's philosophy that it is the duty of the strong to help and protect the weak. He hypocritically calls Arthur a tyrant for trying to stop him from terrorizing the weak peasants.

Ash: You still don't know what you're dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. It's structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. Lambert: You admire it. Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

The Architect: Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion. Simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness.

In Piranha 3DD, David Hasselhoff, playing himself, refuses to help rescue people from the piranha-infested waters, saying he's letting natural selection chose the survivors.

Hugo Drax in Moonraker, who planned to use a lethal nerve gas to wipe out all humans on earth and repopulate it with the ones he chose as superior beings.

In An American Werewolf in Paris, Claude gives a speech saying he hates institutions like hospitals and charities because their only purpose is to extend the lives of the weak, in turn weakening the human race as a whole. Combined with Fantastic Racism, he also considers werewolves like himself to be superior to ordinary humans. It's helped by the fact he is a neo-Nazi who deliberately infected himself with lycanthropy and then his friends to form a Superior Species.

A running theme throughout multiple stories in Cloud Atlas. Hugo Weaving's character(s) echo the phrase "There's a natural order to things" in various contexts.

Mentioned in the Holocaust docudrama Conspiracy. When Heydrich finishes the conference, he echoes the Nazi views on evolution as he gloats that the genocide of the Jews will "advance the human race to greater purity in a space of time so short Charles Darwin will be astonished". He would be. Evolution doesn't work that way. The real Nazis apparently knew it, and banned Darwin's works.

Jordan Belfort and all of his underlings at Stratton Oakmont in The Wolf of Wall Street. You're either rich or you're a loser with a miserable life.

Also, the Neimoidians (the species in charge of the Trade Federation in the prequel movies) had a similar system, not where the strong survive, but the smart. Neimoidians were insect-like humanoids who begin life as grubs, who the adults raise in communal hives, and only give a limited amount of food. Grubs who show ingenuity and cleverness learn how to collect and hoard food for themselves, while those who don't starve before they can mature. This system has made the race masters of strategy and politics, but it has also made them incredibly greedy by nature, and terrified of death.

In In Time, rich businessman Phillipe Weis says the system where the rich live forever and people die if they go broke fits the policies of "Survival of the Fittest" and "Natural Selection". He's so obsessed with Darwinism that the password to his vault is "12021809", Charles Darwin's birthday.

Downfall has a scene where Adolf Hitler, played beautifully by Bruno Ganz, discusses this concept at length. After spending a good portion of the movie walking around looking like the dignified old captain of a sinking ship, he does need to remind you that he's still the same psychopathic asshole you know and love. Hilariously enough, after giving the below speech, he receives news that Himmler has began talks for surrender with the advancing Anglo-American Allies and launches into a furious rant - guess the whole "the strong must survive at the weak's expense" thing doesn't really apply when "the strong" in this case is someone other than Germany.

"You must shake up the entire Luftwaffe. Many mistakes have been made, so be ruthless. Life never forgives weakness. This so-called humanity is just priest's drivel. Compassion is a primal sin, compassion for the weak is a betrayal of nature. [...] I have always obeyed this law of nature by never permitting myself to feel compassion. I have ruthlessly suppressed domestic opposition and brutally crushed the resistance of alien races. It is the only way to deal with it. Apes, for example, trample every outsider to death. What goes for apes, goes more for human beings."

The truly scary thing is this isn't just depicting him as a Card-Carrying Villain. The real life version of Hitler actually did say things like that.

He was also somewhat more consistent in his views. Once Germany started to lose (thanks in no small part to his own incompetence) he considered this proof the German people were not the Master Race at all, and that the Slavs he had despised actually might be. Hitler thus concluded that Germany deserved destruction at the hands of the Soviet Union due to their superiority.

An old joke: two friends are trekking through the jungle and set up camp for the night. At one point, one of them sits bolt upright and says "Listen! I heard a sound. I think it's a lion." The other simply gets out of bed and starts putting on a pair of shoes. The first friend looks at at the second friend incredulously and says "What on Earth are you doing? You can't possibly outrun a lion." The second friend looks the first right in the eye and says: "I don't have to outrun the lion."

Deconstructed in the Doctor Who story discussed below; while explaining the joke to a listener who didn't get itnote If you don't get it, it's basically this: the second person doesn't have to outrun the lion, he/she just has to outrun the first person, so that the lion will hunt down and kill the first person instead., the Doctor points out that while it's effective in a ruthless sort of way, it's effective one time only — who's the surviving friend going to outrun when the next lion shows up?

Sutekh the Destroyer takes this trope to an extreme. He wants to wipe out all life so nothing can evolve that can threaten him, despite being a Physical God who is capable of destroying planets and who not even the Time Lords can stop.

Literature

Who is John Galt? Well, whatever else he is, as the poster boy for Objectivism he is certainly this.

Salazar Slytherin was a firm believer in this in the Harry Potter series. Lord Voldemort (his direct descendant and heir) and the Death Eaters have great shades of this philosophy as well (fitting, as they were expies of Hitler and the Nazis). They believe that magical strength and purity is in the blood, and therefore Pure-Bloods are more powerful than Half-Bloods or Muggleborns (Mudbloods). In later days, as Pure-Bloods grew fewer and fewer, they didn't care too much about Half-Bloods, so long as you weren't a Mudblood, but they were still out to remove all Mudbloods and subjugate the Muggles because they believed that it was their right as wizards to reign over the less-powerful.

Gellert Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore fought for the subjugation of the Muggles specifically For The Greater Good (which was actually Grindelwald's slogan) in their younger days. Grindelwald carried on, but his partner had a falling out after an altercation between him, his brother, and Grindelwald, which resulted in the death of his sister and changed him forever.

And in another vein, the Elder Wand itself may be an item promoting this. As a wand of immense power, nigh-unbeatable by any challenger who is not the rightful wielder of it, its owner would consistently grow stronger and stronger (barring an opponent killing its owner in a secretive way, which was common occurrence) until in theory, it would reach the pinnacle of its power (a wielder who would never be beaten and die peacefully) where its power would vanish as there would no longer be a rightful wielder.

In Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover Landfall, humans arrive on Darkover as the survivors of a crashed starship — fortunately a colony ship, unfortunately meant for another world altogether with existing infrastructure. Fewer than 70 women survived who might be capable of childbearing. The medical practitioners deliberately decided not to make any special effort to save any woman who looked like dying in childbirth, on the grounds that their gene pool wasn't large enough to include the weak. Definitely an example of a Racism Theorist — and this is presented as an I Did What I Had to Do situation. An especially bad example because 70 females is nowhere near enough genetic diversity to sustain a population.

In the David Brin book The Postman the Holnists believed in right of the strong to rule over, enslave, and rape the weak (The Movie turns them into simple racists misguidedly following a self-help book).

In Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, Philip Lombard fits this category quite nicely. He freely admits to having left twenty-one African men to starve to death, and is well-known for participating in quasi-legal activities. His justification is, "self-preservation is a man's first duty." However, this ultimately becomes his own undoing during the showdown between himself and Vera Claythorne at the end.

The Dark One from The Wheel of Time. This clearly backfires because his chief servants, the Forsaken, fight with each other as much as with Rand al'Thor- except that he actually seems to like that, too. He is the personification of not only evil, but also chaos and paradox, after all.

In Donald Kingsbury's Courtship Rite, the entire population of the world of Geta are Straw Meritocrat Social Darwinists; the native life of the planet is mostly not edible, and famines are historically common. Cannibalism is part of their way of life, in which people with less kalothi (worthiness to survive) go to feed those of higher kalothi in times of need. The end of the book reveals that in the far future they have become a different species.

The idea of social darwinism is so ingrained in their culture that even one character who is a self-proclaimed "vegetarian" and openly advocates an end to the "sacrifices" believes in eugenics. She doesn't think carriers of genetic disorders should reproduce.

General Zaroff's excuse for hunting others for his amusement in The Most Dangerous Game stem from the fact that he believes that the people that he hunts are weak and that he is strong. The other excuse is that hunting animals was starting to bore him.

The Ship Who Searched has a minor character (Haakon-Fritz) who fits this. He actually belongs to an organization called the Neo-Darwinists. When the archaeological team he's on is attacked by a pack of alien wolves, his response is to bolt for the nearest building and lock the door, leaving the rest of the team out.

The villains of The City Who Fought are a race of social darwinists who, like the Fremen, have grown up in an extremely harsh environment.

In Wyrd Sisters, Lady Felmett repeatedly describes those not as ruthless and tyrannical as her as "weak".

In Interesting Times, the Agatean Empire's entire ruling class is more or less like this, although with very specific rules. It's perfectly acceptable to assassinate your own parents, but not the Emperor himself - the "correct" move is to put him in a position where you have leverage.

Carpe Jugulum has Count Magpyr and his family, who through most of the book speak condescendingly of every other species on the Discworld, view humans only as prey for vampires, and look down on other vampires who haven't overcome traditional vampire weaknesses like they have. Appropriately, it's revealed that the "weaknesses" of traditional vampires are actually survival mechanisms that keep the vampires safe from their main predator: hordes of angry peasants.

Mortal Engines has Municipal Darwinism, a system by which the inhabitants of mobile cities justify eating smaller mobile cities, stripping them down for spares, and selling their inhabitants into slavery. Large cities eat small cities, cities eat towns, towns eat suburbs (all of the above are gigantic and mechanized). Everyone picks on "static" settlements, which form the Anti-Traction League and fight back with hordes of airships and suicide bombers. This is not a sustainable "ecology" since there isn't much in the way of outside resources coming into the system. The real ecosystem takes energy from the sun via plants, the cities don't do much of that.

The Mesan Alignment in the Honor Harrington stories believe that their superior genetics mean that they should be running the galaxy.

In Destiny's Star by Elizabeth Vaughan, the protagonists are sent to the land of The Plains, where the inhabitants are a Proud Warrior Race. They do not have doctors or healers, as anyone who gets sick or injured are immediately killed unless magical healing is available. The heroine gets a broken leg, but survives by persuading them to wait until she completes a sacred duty first. Her leg is eventually magically healed.

Though one can't expect bunnies to have heard of Charles Darwin, officers of Efrafa's Owsla in Watership Down are given full mating privileges, suggesting that Woundwort wants only his strongest bucks to father the kittens in his warren. Subverted by Nature itself, as many of the badly-overcrowded does fail to sustain the pregnancies that result.

Ebenezer Scrooge: "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and thereby decrease the surplus population." And you'd better believe this comes back to bite him later on.

The Artilleryman in H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds: "I mean that men like me are going on living — for the sake of the breed. I tell you, I'm grim set on living. And if I'm not mistaken, you'll show what insides you've got, too, before long. ... All these — the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way — they'd be no good."

Visser One subscribes to this philosophy, believing that morality is merely a 'shield for the weak' and that it is all about 'the hunger for power'. She kills several people just out of assuming they're as ruthless as she is. It turns out she doesn't totally believe this since she had a soft spot for the children she raised while on Earth. One of the reasons she took a less forceful approach to conquering Earth was to avoid endangering them.

Crayak's goal is to pit race against race, the winners growing stronger with each engagement, until only one species is left which will then revere him as a god.

Tigerstar and other villains in Warrior Cats say that weak cats should either look after themselves or die.

In Crookedstar's Promise, Crookedstar and Oakheart's mother Rainflower arranges for the latter to be mentored by their father Shellheart...though it's uncommon for parents to mentor their children in the series. When questioned about it, she declares that only the strongest mentors could train the best apprentices. Right in front of Crookedstar.

Shoteka from Seeker Bears, Toklo's rival, tells him that weak bears should be killed or else the healthier bears would die as well.

John Taylor Gatto (a former schoolteacher) has published works on the history of schooling and argued that social Darwinism was the point. School is based on a "mudsill theory" of man in which everyone but a small section of humanity is considered to be worthless. Darwinian competitions in school are supposed to flush out the trash, i.e. anyone who cannot fit into the enivronment and thrive.

Crom, god of the Cimmerians in Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories. He breathes life and strength into his followers at birth and after that they're on their own. Any plea for help is more likely to be punished than rewarded.

The future dystopia in Red Rising runs according to this philosophy. Democracy is scorned because of how it allows the "weak" a say and instead, society is rigidly stratified with castes genetically engineered to look differently, with the highest caste, the Goldes, being tall and muscular "gods" with Supernatural Gold Eyes. Within the Gold caste itself, leaders are selected according to Social Darwinism by use of The Spartan Way- the first night in, pairs of student trainees are put in a room together and only one is allowed to leave alive. After that, students take part in a deadly version of Capture the Flag in which proctors do nothing to prevent cheating let alone abusing or killing opponents. The goal is so that whoever comes out alive or (better yet) wins the game will be the best leader on account of being the most clever and ruthless.

CEO Nicholas Wyatt in Paranoia is this personified, viewing anyone who doesn't measure up as unworthy of surviving in the corporate world. This makes his total loss to Goddard at the end of book rather fitting.

The superhumans in Star Trek The Eugenics Wars are superior in every measurable way. Both they and the scientists that created them believe that this makes them the natural next step in human evolution and more worthy of inheriting the planet.

In The Dresden Files, this trope largely defines the Winter Court. Winterfae consider killing someone over an insult to be admirable and even attractive, as we see firsthand in Cold Days. Along with the psychopathic, sexually violent urges forced on anyone who taps into Winter's power.

In Illegal Alien by Robert J. Sawyer the Tosoks justify their genocidal actions this way, saying that if they aren't divine creations and with their periodic hybernations leaving them vulnerable to sneak attacks, it is simply "survival of the fittest" to attack and kill other species (with the exception of the faction that Hask and Seltar are from, who try to stop it).

The Secret Agent: The Professor has views like this, wanting to crush those he consider is weak (even though he himself is not really strong in any way).

Arc Of Fire: Rahze starts to talk about the strong having the right to crush the weak and such after turning evil.

Subverted in George R.R. Martin's Tuf Voyaging with the planet S'uthlam. The dominant religion believes that man can someday evolve into God, but they emphasize random mutation over struggle as the driver of evolution, as such they encourage everyone to multiply as much as possible to increase the opportunities for mutation. By their third appearance they're planning to conquer the neighboring systems for more living space so Tuf gives them a superfood that could satisfy their dietary needs, and carries a Sterility Plague. Though he estimates that between 0.3 and 0.7% of the population would be resistant, and natural selection would enable the population to recover eventually.

In SilverFin, Randolph Hellebore is obsessed with weeding what he sees as weakness, and uses his son as a test subject for his theories.

In Refugees, some of the alien Benefactors are convinced that the humans are a genetically-flawed species and must be interbred with others to make them stronger.

Schooled In Magic: Aurelius justifies the poor treatment many students receive on the basis that they must be strong for surviving as adult mages. If they can't handle bullying and pranks, they'll have no chance.

Catch-22 ultimately boils down to this, as the American soldiers justify committing war crimes as Catch-22 gives them the right to do anything they can't be stopped from doing.

Live-Action TV

Almost all Nietzscheans in Andromeda — even the non-villainous ones, who are generally "good guys" only in that they exist in a state of permanent Enemy Mine.

On The Knick, Herman Barrow, the hospital administrator, is a committed social Darwinist. He's an equally committed racist. Still, the show is set in 1900 New York, making it more Fair for Its Day than not.

Frank Underwood in House of Cards (US). He is determined to destroy the traditional American system of handouts (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) in favor of forcing all American citizens regardless of poor health or disadvantage to just get a job, so that the weak can be eliminated. Frank also has no qualms of the many heinous acts he commits (murders, defamation, betrayal) of the people he must destroy first to become President of the United States.

Underwood: A lion does not ask permission before he eats a zebra. Lions cannot talk and zebras will not listen.

The Shadows, known as the Lords of Chaos, espouse a Social Darwinist attitude and manipulate the younger races into interstellar wars to promote chaos and disorder where the strongest rise to the top (it's their way of "helping"). Their Armour Piercing Question, "What do you want?" embodies this by defining the answerer entirely by their own drives and ambitions.

The faction of PsiCorps led by Bester also believes this. One has to wonder how they would react if they learned that the development of telepathy was not the result of evolution, but genetic tampering by the Vorlons...

The title character in the episode "Deathwalker" was yet another case of this. Her species, the Dilgar, invaded multiple other races in a war a few decades ago, during which she was apparently the alien equivalent of Dr. Mengele. However the Dilgar were defeated and driven back to their own planet. Their star went supernova, wiping out the Dilgar on their home planet. She claims that the other races earned the Longevity Treatment she developed by driving her race to extinction, but is actually attempting to get revenge by giving them a serum that requires Human Resources to make, thus driving them into chaos if her ship hadn't been vaporized by the Vorlons.

Another episode had Ivanova trying to negotiate with the Lumati, an alien Planet of Hats species who strongly believe in Social Darwinism; when they discover Downbelow, the "slum" of the station, they approve the "segregation" of "unwanted" elements and agree to grant the desired treaty as well as implement the same system on the Lumati homeworld. When Ivanova tries to correct their misinterpretation, they gently chastise her for her unnecessary modesty.

One alien species constructed an indestructible killer robot to wipe out all "impure" members. It found out, unsurprisingly, that there is no such thing as "pure" and ended up killing all of them for "impurity".

In 5th season episode Secrets of the Soul, all members of the Interstellar Alliance are supposed to be sharing medical information. The Hyach are holding out on Dr. Franklin. He discovers there was once another sentient species on their planet, the Hyach-do. There was some interbreeding. The Hyach passed religious laws that prohibited the interbreeding and eventually wiped out the Hyach-do. After they became an interstellar race, the Hyach censored this part of their history from official documents. Over time their birthrate slowed. Dr. Franklin discovered that the Hyach needed a genetic component from the Hyach-do. By committing genocide, the Hyach may have eliminated their own race also. It isn't revealed if the Alliance found a solution for them.

The Doctor Who serial Survival deconstructs this trope / worldview in several ways, most notably by turning the Master into an essentially Social Darwinist villain — all the other characters are exploited for his own survival. He manipulates The Dragon, Midge, by playing on Social Darwinist beliefs — a specific comment on Thatcherism in Eighties Britain. There's also a bullet-headed Territorial Army type who's a determined believer in this type of philosophy, only to completely fall apart when he finds himself thrown into an environment where he has to actually practice it. It doesn't end well for him. Ultimately, the 'weaker' characters who work together and are able to overcome their purely individualistic / survivalist instincts do okay, the 'stronger' ones who can't and fall into this trope die.

Denise: And now the time has come to choose [the children which are to be given over to the 456] and if we can't identify the lowest-achieving 10 per cent of this country's children, then what are the league tables for?

Sylar of Heroes. Even he himself defines his actions in terms of evolution. Interestingly enough, he'll generally leave normal people alone as long as they don't stand in his way.

Khan is the epitome of a Social Darwinist. He is himself is the product of genetic engineering designed to create stronger, faster, more perfect humans, and feels it's his right to dominate the whole galaxy due to his genetically engineered awesomeness. He fails due to his genetically engineered ego.

The Q being from Star Trek: The Next Generation accuses humanity of being a "grievously savage" 'child' race, and says they must be removed to make room for more "worthy" species.

In the backstory of the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Conscience of the King", a dictator of a space colony, when faced with starvation, ordered half the population executed so the rest of the population wouldn't starve to death before the relief ships arrive. This could have been a Shoot the Dog scenario in an I Did What I Had to Do situation, but he chose people based on some sort of genetic superiority basis determined by him instead of more random means. What's particularly sad was that the relief ships arrived months ahead of schedule.

Though justified in-universe, the Prime Directive seems to apply this to non-warp-capable civilizations in dictating (in effect) that they should be allowed to go extinct rather than having their "natural evolution" interrupted.

Ryubee Sonozaki from Kamen Rider Double, as seen with the Gaia Impact in the end of the series. His plan is to unleash a wave of energy that will kill everyone on Earth that isn't compatible with the Gaia Memories, leaving only the "chosen" to rule whatever remains, with himself as leader thanks to his daughter Wakana being the "Earth's Priestess", that is, the one who initiated the impact in the first place. Then Jun Kazu steps in after Ryubee's death and tries to launch the Gaia Impact himself.

Lionel Luthor expressed sentiments of this sort in Smallville, but it's his Alternate Universe counterpart, Earth-2 Lionel who truly embodies this. Having risen to become the most powerful man in the world, Earth-2 Lionel maintains that "it's got to be survival of the fittest," a principle he ruthlessly applies to himself and his children, encouraging them to plot against one another and himself to see who deserves to be the true heir to the Luthor name. In a Bad Future in the regular timeline, President EvilLex Luthor is one as well, plotting to nuke the world so that he can rule over the strongest of humanity's survivors.

The Bad FutureOverlord version of Wyatt Halliwell in Charmed often invokes this trope. His morality was twisted by having to constantly fend off Elder Gideon's attempts to kill him whilst holding him in captivity, presumably until he finally killed Gideon himself. He rules both the mortal plane and the Underworld with an iron fist. His brother Chris has never been able to sway him to good or escape his target list, because of his philosophy that power rests Above Good and Evil.

Universe at War the Hierarchy have decimated millions of worlds before coming to Earth, they believe that they are killing off the weak and they are superior to all.

Kamen Rider Gaim: The Rival Kaito Kumon, AKA Armored Rider Baron, presents an unusual Jerk with a Heart of Gold spin on this trope. On the one hand, he sided with a group that's willing to let the Alien Kudzu take over Earth because he feels it'll cull the weak. On the other hand, rather than advocating Might Makes Right, he believes that the weak have a duty to become strong enough to stand up on their own two feet so nobody can push them around anymore. He doesn't boast about his own strength, but believes that only those who seek out strength are worthy of respect; the strong who oppress the weak are the enemy, while the weak who do nothing about it are beneath notice. The Fansubbers at Æsir have noted that this makes Kaito's dialog very difficult to translate accurately.

The series also deconstructs the concept in the form of the Overlord King, Roshuo. After gaining the power of the Forbidden Fruit on his homeworld, he imposed social darwinism as law, only to have his entire civilisation crumble into infighting and leave him as ruler of a desperate few Always Chaotic Evil subordinates. By the time of the series, he clearly realises that he made a dreadful mistake and condemned his species to extinction.

Murder in the First: Erich Blunt goes on a rant along this line, claiming the murder of a few people doesn't matter as the world is overpopulated and they must "cull the herd".

Music

In addition to being quite the misanthrope and troll, Boyd Rice includes many of his social darwinist views in his lyrics. It's more apparent in his essays, though, in which he makes a very good case for Social Darwinism.

When you take the lyrics and music video of Pearl Jam's "Do the Evolution" together, it seems to be a satire of this attitude.

Alex Shelley, from Generation Next on, even after his Heel–Face Turn induced run against the very group he created, of the struggle archetype. He's come to hate backstabbing, cheating, ambushes and all else against the ROHCode but endures it all because he believes that those who can't handle it don't belong, and that prevailing while sticking to the code will be best for the future of not just ROH but the business overall. Since Generation Next he also continues to bring young talent into the promotion with intent to help them get better, again with the belief that if they get to good for him to hang with he should no longer be around.

Jon Moxley has this view on professional wrestling, as he intimated when Sami Callihan announced his arrival to CZW. Since rationality isn't exactly Moxley's forte though, his idea of "survival of the fittest" was lighting the arena on fire and seeing who is still alive among the ashes.

Sheamus seems to have adopted this as his credo since his Face–Heel Turn in early 2015, noting that he's physically bigger than most other WWE Superstars and expressing his desire to rid WWE of its "insects."

Tabletop Games

The Skaven and the Greenskins (Goblinoids) in Warhammer. Also the Dark Elves, to certain extent.

The Word of God is notoriously ambiguous whether all greenskins represent the same species or if Snotlings, Goblins and Orcs are actually three separate species. The authors of the game just mention that the greenskins never stop growing before they die...

Life is cheap if you have fur or green skin. This trope makes sense in this concept.

The Drow are a Planet of Hats of Always Chaotic Evil Social Darwinists, due to a spectacularly poor choice in patron deity (a demonic spider-goddess) and living in underworld caves whose native fauna make them nearly a Death World. This does ensure that drow who survive are more dangerous, particularly to each other. Realistic natural selection might well have either wiped them out altogether or forced them to cooperate in a more rational manner. Lolth, their patron deity, tells them to knock it off whenever they fall below a certain point in population. And yes, this makes the drow a race that officially survives on Deus Ex Machina.

The now-dead god Iyachtu Xvim used to be a Social Darwinist who didn't like helping the weak like some of the more goody-two-shoes gods, believing that they were directly responsible for their situations and didn't deserve help.

The Eberron setting's Children of Winter are a Druidic sect who believe that the world passes through distinct season-like stages and the recent occurrence of the Mourning is a sign of the dawning of Winter. Thus, if the sapient races are to survive until the Spring, the weak must be culled from the herd. To this end, they propagate natural disasters (famine, plague, etc) and interfere with efforts to alleviate them. In theory, they are Well Intentioned Extremists. In practice, most DMs tend to use them as handy "guys you can punch in the face without feeling guilty".

The Clans of BattleTech have been bred for war for centuries using intensely competitive rituals to determine whose genes get passed on and whose don't, and believe this makes them worthy of ruling the Inner Sphere. Naturally, they get whipped by the "inferiors", who recognize that you can still be of use in combat over the age of 30. The story of the Clan invasion could be a deconstruction of the whole thing. While their rituals and codes of honor helped perfect the Clans' fighting technique, they forgot many of the pragmatic realities of war. Meanwhile, the Inner Sphere realms were all too familiar with them, thanks to their constantly bickering, possessive, petty leaders. In essence: the Clans' didn't "breed for war", they bred for ritualized honor duels, and paid for their Crippling Overspecialization with strategic failure.

Yawgmoth, from Magic: The Gathering. An unusual example is his nemesis Urza, a protagonist eugenicist; calling him "heroic" would admittedly be a stretch. Urza is such a darwinist that he actually sides with Phyrexia after spending millenia trying to defeat it when he actually visits the place, since Phyrexia is everything he ever wanted as an artificer and as a Social Darwinist. Vorinclex from New Phyrexia is a social darwinist as well, to the point of objecting to society at all. The only thing that matters is that ability to kill those weaker. Green and Black, despite being enemy colours, love social darwinism.

The green-blue Simic Combine from Ravnica had shades of this. They engineered plagues to kill off the weak and sold cures to the highest bidder.

Dromoka is a nicer than example than most. She does at least respect and protect her charges, but you either toughen up or become her lunch, as she suffers no "weak links". Her eponymous clan is a meritocracy for this reason. Still miles better than the rest of Tarkir.

Lunars have been known to apply this to the societies, both human and beastman, that they set up. Generally, if a nation they've been shepherding is going well, they'll stop giving it covert (or, in some cases, overt) assistance and watch to see what happens. Oh, and for the setting in question, they're good guys, who made colossal sacrifices to stop The Fair Folk from wiping out reality 800 years ago.

Cecelyne, one of the Yozis, was responsible for the principle of law in Creation, but it's suggested her ideas, even as a Primordial, were a bit... off. Now that she's been made into a Yozi, her idea of "law" has twisted to "whatever benefits the strong so that they rule over or drive out the weak." Oh, and her chosen are the Dark Messiah caste. Be quite afraid.

Dark Eldar are almost exactly the same as the Orks, except replace size and toughness with skill and cunning. Dark Eldar society requires all of it's members to be Crazy-PreparedMagnificent Bastards, or they'll be backstabbed and betrayed by even more ambitious and cunning rivals and underlings. As such, Dark Eldar kabal society is constantly shifting around as warriors, dracons and archons climb up the ladder... or get kicked off it.

Chaos worshipers. One of their mottos is "purge the weak".

There exists a school of thought within the Imperial Inquisition called the Istvaanians. They believe that the Imperium grows stronger through conflict. If a certain Imperial sector is currently enjoying peace, they might stir up a conflict, just to make sure the populace are on their toes. They may also set up a "crucible of fire" to ensure that only the strong survive. They will monitor any conflicts they start for particularly strong, cunning and/or ruthless candidates to strengthen the Imperium. Behold, the only people in the setting who would argue that the Imperium's problem is that it's not fighting enough wars.

The eponymous creatures from Werewolf: The Apocalypse have definite shades of this, in that their leadership is decided by challenges. These can be non-violent challenges but rarely are. The cake is taken by the Get of Fenris tribe, who think being tougher than everyone else is the only worthwhile goal in life.

The Ratkin (wererats) and Ajaba (werehyenas) are extreme social darwinists. The former were tasked with killing humans when the human population grew too large, and the latter kill humans who are old, sick, or weak.

Also sharing the universe of the previous entry are the Lasombra: one of many vampire clans in Vampire: The Masquerade. Unlike the werewolves, they completely revel in promoting social Darwinism. The hold to it so strong that the clan's ultimate goal is creating a world purged of the weak and owned solely by the strong. They're not averse to bringing about Hell on Earth to accomplish that either. During Gehenna, this mentality finally bit the Lasombra in the butt; centuries of backstabbing resulted in their numbers too depleted to maintain autonomy as a Clan, just like Sparta in Real Life below.

In Rocket Age the cult of the Fanged Mother on Venus believes that the strong should dominate the weak and the only ethical thing for the strong to do is to cull the weak to sate the Fanged Mother's thirst. Needless to say, most Venusians aren't happy with a death cult turning Venus into any more of a Crapsack World.

Changeling: The Lost suggests that DMs who want to make the Summer Court more morally grey include elements of this trope. Such an interpretation, however, is still a logical extension of Summer's canonical traits: only letting physical strong warriors have leadership positions, referring to low-ranked members derogatorily, drawing on powers in combat that harm themselves in addition to the enemy "[because] they will be able to fight through" the pain... You get the idea.

Video Games

Andrew Ryan from BioShock has shades of this, what with his version of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. He even builds an underwater utopia so that the weak do not keep the strong down. Someone still has to scrub the toilets in Rapture; even if Ryan brought down only the best and the brightest people that fit in with his ideology, people who were once captains of industry back on land were no better than average there, and were disgruntled when they had to work menial jobs that someone's gotta do. On the other hand, Ryan had a fairly broad definition of "strong." For example, he met one of his best friends, Bill McDonough, when the man was installing the plumbing in Ryan's apartment. Ryan had only paid for tin pipes, but McDonough was using brass ones and paying the difference out of his own pocket, as he took a great sense of pride in making sure none of his work ever leaked. The next day, Ryan hired him as his general contractor, and made sure to bring him down to Rapture when the city was built.

Pokémon has a G-rated version in Silver, from Pokémon Gold and Silver. He sees anything he considers "weak" as worthless, and is exceptionally abusive and ruthless towards Pokèmon and humans alike. Especially when it comes to his own Pokèmon. Oh, and he's only around 11 or 12 years old. It's thought that he inspired Paul, mentioned in the anime folder above, in the anime several years later. It's revealed in the remakes that there's a reason for this. He was abandoned by his father, Giovanni, after the defeat of Team Rocket at the hands of Red, when he was only around 8 or 9 years old. Seeing his father as weak and a coward, he vowed to become stronger at any cost. He gets better, however.

The City of Heroes' main bad guy, Lord Recluse, has founded his entire evil organization on Social Darwinism... to the point where he actively encourages every faction to fight against every other faction and backstab each other freely. It's a wonder his plans for world conquest go anywhere when all the bad guys are busy killing each other off instead of fighting the heroes. note This may have been inspired by the Nazis, who recommended Klingon Promotions and frequently assigned the same task to two or more officials to see who got it done first, promoting infighting. This did not help in making The Trains Run on Time. This does explain why the majority of your enemies in City of Villains are not, in fact, heroes. While Recluse adheres to Survival of the Fittest, he doesn't let it consume his organization. Anarchy and insubordination are stamped out pretty quickly if they interfere with his plans — one of the few things Villains in his city can't do without restraint is attack civilians. Who else is going to pay Recluse his taxes?

Kane from Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series infuses humans with Tiberium to make them evolve. This is actually more evolutionarily-literate than most examples, as he's trying to make it so they can adapt to Tiberium to allow them to survive on Tiberium-covered worlds instead of just making them tougher or smarter. The tougher part happens but it's more a side effect.

Mortimer McMire, The Hero's rival in Commander Keen games, believes that he is the most intelligent being in the universe and that gives him the right to wipe out all the lesser beings. His IQ is315; Keen has an IQ of 314. Mr. McMire believes Keen can die with the rest, simply because his IQ is one point too short.

The Omar from Deus Ex: Invisible War. They're a Hive Mind of transhuman cyborgs that consider themselves the future of the human race and plan to replace humanity the old-fashioned way: Wait and let their evolutionary superiority speak for itself. In three of the endings, the Omar see themselves either replaced by the Helios system or exterminated by the Templars or Illuminati — they're vindicated in the fourth ending if all three conspiracies are defeated, as humanity drives itself to extinction and leaves them to inherit the Earth.

At the end of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Sarif talks about "survival of the fittest" and how "some people will be left behind." However, he's a Honest Corporate Executive and the closest thing to a Big Good the game has, and he's referring to the few people who are completely incompatible with augmentations, which he honestly wants to make available for everyone.

The Altmer (High Elves) have this as an active belief, particularly when under more extremist leadership like the Thalmor. They believe that they descend from the Aedra, and that the diversity of all other races of Mer is the result of "degeneration". They actively try to breed themselves back into their ideal, including killing undesirable progeny. And don't even tryto bring upthe races of Men around them...

Molag Bal is the Daedric Prince of Corruption and Domination. He's pretty keen on the idea of the strong dominating the weak. In Skyrim, he goads you into killing the Vigilant of Stendarr who accompanied you into his House of Horrors because "Weak. He's weak. You're strong. Kill!"

Ashnard from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance combines this with being a Blood Knight. Ashera tops him in believing all sentient life is too flawed and must be destroyed to start again. This is the same person that split herself into the goddesses of Order and Chaos because Chaos was her weaker half.

Ashnard: You? Cut me down? Heee... Good. If you possess the strength to do so, then so be it.

Wesker is nudged to one of these in Resident Evil 5. He'll give long speeches about his beliefs during boss fights, but — hilariously — your character will start getting annoyed with how he drones on.

Both Serpent and Master Albert from Mega Man ZX display traits of this, especially Serpent. Other examples include Aeolus, who believes only the intelligent deserve to live, and Atlas, who believes mankind can only grow and evolve through suffering thanks to her past as a soldier from a country overrun by Mavericks.

Chiaki, a rich-brat-turned-demon-queen of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne leads a faction of Darwinists under the reason of Yosuga. The main character even has the option of joining them and creating a true Social Darwinist world (as soon as you help her kill all the human-like slave race for being too weak). Unique among all the faction leaders, she is the only one to fight you even if you choose her Reason, as there can be only one ruler in the new world.

The world Chiaki is trying to create is logically impossible. Even if she succeeds and the world of Yosuga is created, there would still be some individuals who aren't as strong as others. By Chiaki's logic, these individuals would be unnecessary. Thus, her vision of a world without unnecessary things cannot be made into a reality.

This is also the Chaos philosophy in Shin Megami Tensei I, where in supporting Lucifer, you fight to eliminate God and create a world where the strong can freely prey upon the weak, and where demonkind are no longer bound by the restraints of God's creation. In Devil Survivor, this is not a belief system you can actively subscribe to. Setting demonkind loose on the world is the result of failure, not success.

In Devil Survivor 2 this is the philosophy subscribed to by Keita Wakui and Yamato Hotsuin, and the latter provides the opportunity for the Player Character to institute a world based on meritocracy and social darwinism where the 'great' are given infinite opportunity for advancement. While said philosophy mostly reads like a 17-year old's understanding of Ayn Rand filtered through his extremely privileged upbringing, Yamato is unusual in that he uses the series' traditional Law imagery even though he subscribes to a Chaos philosophy (similarly, his opponent Ronaldo follows the philosophy of Law, but uses the methods of Chaos). If you don't take Yamato's path, you'll have to defeat Keita and Yamato to finish the game, after which Keita will decide to follow you on the basis that if you beat him, you must know what you're talking about. So does Yamato, but only on a path where he isn't Killed Off for Real.

Asura in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey believes that civilization itself is a failed concept that takes man away from his "natural" state, and that only in barbarism can humans live properly. His method for creating the "proper" world is the Delphinus Parasite, which erases civilized impulses and reduces victims to snarling violence.

Luca Blight from Suikoden II is a particularly extreme and sadistic example.

Knights of the Old Republic demonstrates how Sith work like this when you enter the academy on Korriban. One does wonder how their system of backstabbery and "every man for himself" philosophy manages to outnumber and overwhelm the Jedi, who co-operate towards a common cause and don't kill half of their own people. It is mentioned that the Sith will always fail sooner or later because of this, but it's never actually shown in the game. The sequel revisits the academy and shows what happens when you have a bunch of Drunk on the Dark Side villains without any strong leadership to guide them: a very empty academy.

If you go out of your way to help people you meet in sidequests, she criticizes you, saying that you're robbing them of the chance to overcome obstacles by themselves. Although she also criticizes you for being too harsh...

This is also the nominal philosophy of the Closed Fist in Jade Empire.

Khamal Rex from Universe at War feels that if any species couldn't keep themselves from getting wiped out by the Hierarchy, then they didn't deserve to live in the first place.

The Lugovalian Empire from Infinite Space more or less works in this way, as seen with the throne succession. Apparently, this mindset even works on its citizens, given how strong they are.

Charadon, leader of the Doviello, leads a pack of wolves to ravage his own family's village in order to find the strongest and fiercest members of his tribe (the survivors who fight off the wolves). He and the Doviello as a whole are Social Darwinists, though Mahala downplays this.

Depending on the route and your affiliation in Armored Core, Jack-O may be the Protagonist or Antagonist. Regardless of which one, you will learn that Ravens who fail to live up to his expectations die a lot sooner than Alliance Ravens.

Legate Lanius, The Dragon of Caesar, is this to a much more brutal extent. If he rules the Legion and wins the Battle of Hoover Dam, he makes Vegas into a twisted Warrior Heaven where he puts the world to the sword. In his mind, violence will set the world free, breaking the weak and letting the strong truly thrive. He even uses you as proof, stating that being shot and left for dead forced you to become strong.

Caesar's Legion in general operate on a belief in survival through personal strength. In Lonesome Road, if you tell Ulysses that you killed Caesar, he'll respond that by the logic of the Legion, he wasn't strong enough to be a leader if he couldn't even defend himself.

Bass from Mega Man believes he alone is the most powerful robot in the world.

This is the prevailing philosophy of the city of Magnagora in Lusternia. As the bastion of The Taint (essentially a combo platter of nuclear power and creepily visceral body horror), they believe themselves to be genetically superior to all other civilizations. Their most prosperous race (the Viscanti) inbreeds extensively to maintain its "purity", and they have no moral qualms about attacking, enslaving and eating so-called lesser beings. They also encourage backstabbing, assassination and double-dealing in their aristocracy, reasoning that the survivors of any civil war will be stronger and cleverer than those that failed to defend against them.

The Tevinter Imperium runs on this principle according to Fenris from Dragon Age II. Only mages can become nobility there, and only the strongest mages become the movers and shakers in the Imperium. In practice this means that every magister is a Blood Mage since blood magic is too powerful an advantage to pass up. Any mage that didn't use blood magic would quickly be enslaved by another mage with fewer qualms.

Apparently, BioWare is fond of this trope. According to Javik from Mass Effect 3, the Prothean civilization worked on this principle, calling it "The Cosmic Imperative", and it combines the natural and social forms. That is, they believed weaker species' societies would only get in the way of the strong and should be crushed. They were willing to uplift lesser races, but only as long as they had something to offer as slaves to the Prothean Empire; the "worthless" races were destroyed. For the Prothean client races, it's suggested that much of their cultural identity was wiped out as far as the official record since said person notes that Prothean wasn't just the name of his species or empire but applied to any citizen, Prothean or non, within that empire. Thus if your species joined the Empire, you would stop being say... an earthling and instead be a Prothean.

It's even claimed that if another civilization was powerful enough to have defeated the Prothean Empire, they would have willingly subjugated themselves, because obviously that civilization would have been superior. How true this is is very much open for debate, as it never happened until the Reapers came and wiped them out.

The Reapers' effectiveness against the Protheans compared to the next cycle that Humans were part of is the logical conclusion of such social Darwinism (and is in-line with the true gist of Darwin's theory): the danger of homogeneity. Because the cycle that had Humans, Turians, Salarians, Asari, and countless other sentient starfaring species as neighbors in a galactic community instead of masters and clients like in the Prothean times allowed a heterogeneity of culture, science, philosophy, and strategy that emphatically proved to produce a far better and effective array of solutions to the Reaper menace. A strong species or civilization doesn't have an optimization of traits for some arbitrary qualifier, but a diversity of traits for reality; so when a change happens, the largest array of potential adaptations to that change are available to ensure the species/civilization survives in some form.

The Reapers are also this to an extent in that they like strong races because strong races make strong Reapers. Lesser races are still useful... until they're not.

Warlord Okeer from Mass Effect 2 also has elements of this. He's a krogan scientist, a member of a species that's been subjected to a genetic weapon that makes only one in every thousand births viable. He thinks this is still too many, as every krogan baby is then "coddled" and viewed as precious when they should be testing their mettle as warriors.

This is the Riddler's MO in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Who cares if people die in his traps? If they're not smart enough to figure them out, they don't deserve to live. Really, he's doing a public service.

Halo: The Precursors are sort of like this, as they became the Flood seemingly to test out humanity (who were an advanced interstellar empire a long time ago) and the Forerunners. The ones who could defeat the Flood are the ones who are worthy to inherit The Mantle of the Responsibility. Well, that might have been their original plan anyway. Nowadays, their goal is some combination of revenge and a wish to assimilate all sentient life.

[PROTOTYPE 2]: Alex Mercer has decided that humanity is corrupt beyond saving and thinning out the weak while turning the rest into Hive Mind "Evolved" is the way to go. Interestingly, they're completely not a hypocrite about this: when Heller has him thoroughly defeated and seconds away from being consumed, Mercer's only comment is a calm "Huh. Welcome to the top of the food chain."

The Mantid in World of Warcraft are born from massive clutches laid by the Empress. The resulting Swarm then attacks the lands to the east, and are inevitably driven back by the Pandarens. Those who return alive are fully accepted into the Mantid Empire as adults. To the Mantid, the Pandarens' main reason for existing is to kill the weak swarm-born.

Garrosh Hellscream has displayed tendencies toward this, praising strength and one's ability to contribute to the Horde. When he attempted to empower his soldiers with Sha, he continually told them that only the strongest would be able to conquer the darker emotions and gain control of its strength.

The Zerg are revealed to be this in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, however they're a bit more complex version. Rather than the weak should be crushed, it's "we should be strong so we won't be crushed".

Telltale's The Walking Dead brings us William Carver, the despotic leader of a small survivor community. He believes that humanity needs to be "groomed" if it is to survive the Zombie Apocalypse, and routinely weeds out those he deems weak or incompetent, like Reggie. Beneath the very thin pretense, however, it is strongly suggested that he enjoys partaking in cruelty for it's own sake. So, outwardly he's a Struggler, secretly a Jerk Justifier.

League of Legends has the entire city-state of Noxus, who live by the notion that only the strong survive. Somewhat unusually is that their definition of strength includes both mental and physical prowess. It doesn't matter if you overpowered or outsmarted your superior, if you defeated them then you earned their position. The two Noxians who exemplify these are Darius (physical prowess) and Swain (mental prowess): Darius, with his contempt for weakness essentially Klingon Promotion'd his way up through the ranks until he became the leader of Noxus' armies; Swain on the other hand, used manipulation and misdirection until he became the Grand General of Noxusnote read: the country's leader.

Benny from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a Social Darwinist who killed Private Brickman for not being strong enough; when the rest of his squad (Tuttle, Thomas, and Murphy) stuck up for Brickman, he killed them too. He eventually decides to save a child from certain death and earn the forgiveness of his squadmates in the good ending.

The Big Bad of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Senator Steven Armstrong is a Well-Intentioned ExtremistAnti-Villain who wants to create a new America where the strong survive and the weak die. His motivations are very similar to the Patriots who wanted to socially engineer American evolution, only difference being is that instead of information control he intends to use violence to enforce this new world. In any case, he seems to put a lot of emphasis on its freedom and claritive aspects, and genuinely believes he's making the world a better place by whatever means necessary.

Azel: "In a world where only the strong survive, only the strongest of the strong rule."

Flowey the Flower from Undertale describes the world in terms of "kill or be killed" multiple times throughout the game. At the end of the Pacifist route, this is revealed to be because his own decision to be merciful to his attackers in the past had no effect that his new, soulless self could appreciate aside from getting himself killed.

This is the defining character trait of Doomfist from Overwatch, and by proxy Talon, of which he is one of the ruling council members. Doomfist believes that humanity can only grow strong through conflict, and thus intends on plunging the world into an endless war so they can evolve past their limits.

Visual Novels

Gilgamesh in Fate/stay night's "Unlimited Blade Works" scenario. The modern world is way more populated than the one he used to rule and thus the worth of the individual human has fallen drastically. Thus he plans to spill the contents of the incomplete Grail onto the world; by his logic, those who survive the ensuing apocalypse will be strong and "worthy" enough of his rulership. This may be justified in the terms of the Nasuverse's backstory: the human race has gone waaaaay downhill since the days of Uruk. It's an established fact in Fate/Zero that ancient Babylonians were something of a precursor race with nuclear missiles and spaceships and all kinds of crazy stuff. Gil's reasoning is that mankind's decline is due to the population explosion decreasing the "worth" of a single human life, and given all the crazy supernatural laws that the Nasuverse runs on, he might actually be right about this.

In the visual novel Monster Girl Quest, there's a monster by the name of Cassandra who operates like this. She repeatedly kills people, then justifies doing so by saying only the strong deserve to survive anyway. Then, Luka's companion Alice turns one of Cassandra's own attacks back on her...and Cassandra then starts begging for help as she is about to be devoured alive by her own attack. Alice refuses; after all, by Cassandra's own logic, if Cassandra is killed now, then it's because she was too weak.

"If you swim with sharks, you may not get bitten, but don't act like it was an unforeseen tragedy when you do."

Troll society in Homestuck is a Proud Warrior Race which encourages all younger members of the species to play deadly games and take justice into their own hands. The theory behind all this is that any troll who gets culled by this wouldn't be fit to be a soldier anyways, and those who do survive will be all the tougher for it.

Filth Biscuit: Lucy LeDarc, the protagonist of "I Pwned My Love" sees others as obstacles or pawns in her struggle to to claw her way up from the gutter — specifically her childhood friend, incredibly loyal but dim-witted boxer Mick the Rock. Her philosophy, as she explains it to Mick, is pure Social Darwinism; which suits her, since she's also a textbook psychopath.

Web Originals

The RP Survival of the Fittest derives its name from this. In the games, only one student is allowed to survive, making the use of the term literal. Characters such as Danya, Steve Wilson, and V3 participant Adam Reeves exhibit Social Darwinist tendencies. Considering that the first two organised and put into execution the program, that's a given.

The three chairmen in Strange Little Band fit this trope. This influences the way they run Triptych.

Metapedia, a pro-Aryan Wiki which denies the Holocaust ever happened and consistently uses derogatory terms to refer to black people (going so far as to depicting an orangutan's brain as that of a black man). Cracked provides us a summary.

Shadow Stalker of Worm is the selfish type, embracing a twisted Might Makes Right philosophy more to justify her own general sociopathy than out of any genuine ideology. Sharing this philosophy with a mentally fragile Emma played a major part in Taylor's backstory.

Whateley Universe has Crucible, a Well-Intentioned Extremist Struggler, who goes around making people 'live up to their potential' by using hypertech to deliberately cause disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and meteor strikes. To him, what is a few thousand deaths and tens of thousands of lives ruined if it manages to make a hundred or so people 'rise to the occasion' and become more heroic, more aware, and more thankful for their lives?

Sylvester, the protagonist of Twig, is a variant on the Struggler with an emphasis on community and social bonds. Acknowledging that humans are at their core a social species, his belief is that through the conflicts caused by individuals holding different beliefs, stronger bonds and connections are created as ideas are challenged and developed, and thus humanity advances and avoids the twin dangers of "stupidity and stagnation." He therefore sees a perfect world as one made of of individuals with distinct ethical and moral codes who are in constant conflict, forming bonds with one another and driving one another to improve.

— Survival isn't a right, it's a privilege. It's earned. That's the one thing we've always agreed on. If they deserve to live then they'd be strong enough to stop us and smart enough never to trust anyone.

In Adventure Time, Goliad picks up this philosophy after spending one day at a daycare and seeing force work where diplomacy fails to keep the children from running amok. Princess Bubblegum realizes how dangerous this train of thought is and tries to impress upon Goliad how a leader should care for its subjects by comparing leadership to the relationship between a bee and a flower. Goliad rejects this lesson and offers her own interpretation of the bee-flower relationship:

"You're wrong, Princess. Bee cares not for flower. If getting pollen hurts or kills flower, Bee would not care. ::crushes bee:: Bee is stronger than flower. ::reanimates bee:: Goliad is stronger than Bee. Goliad is stronger than all...

Fire Lord Ozai in Avatar: The Last Airbender shows signs of this. He even says to Aang in the finale that the Air Nomads deserved to die because they were weak. Likewise, apparently the reason he hated his son so much was because he was weaker than his sister. In a deliciously ironic twist, Ozai is rendered utterly powerless in the finale, with Aang stripping him of his ability to Firebend. To Ozai, this must be a Fate Worse Than Death.

There are hints dropped that, in general, the extremely-militaristic Fire Nation culture tended toward this trope, albeit not to the same extent as Ozai and other members of the royal family, hence why Zuko has so much self-hatred for most of the series for perceiving himself as the weaker sibling. His becoming Fire Lord at the end of the series helps change this way of thinking for the better, and seems largely done away with by the time of Korra.

Daffy: Survival of the fittest, like they say... and besides, it's fun.

The Decepticons from Transformers all appear to be Social Darwinists. Megatron in particular is a stout Social Darwinist both in his views on "flesh creatures" and with other transformers — "Lesser creatures are the playthings of my will."

For some of the Megatrons throughout the years, this is why they kept Starscream (or one of his expies) around. Megatron knew Starscream was plotting to take over, and staying one step ahead of him was proof that he was a Magnificent Bastard worthy of ruling the Deceptions, but if Starscream manages to usurp him, then he deserves to lead.

"Fifty thousand years of life, and nothing ever troubled me as much as the founding of the Justice League. Dedicating to maintaining society's calcified status quo, the League would protect mankind from disaster, crime, tragedy of any kind. Had you never heard of the survival of the fittest? In essence, you heroes sought to protect humanity from its own glorious evolution."

Superjail!: The Warden, in a flash back as a little boy, is forced by his Jerk Ass father to decapitate a puppy because it is "weak".

Star Wars: The Clone Wars has the villain Pre Vizsla, who has incredible murderous disdain for any being he perceives as weak. When Darth Maul kills him, he accepts his death, as Maul proved himself the stronger warrior.

In the My Little Pony 'n Friends episode "Baby, It's Cold Outside", a penguin king tries to freeze the world, claiming only the worthy would survive. When he freezes his own son by accident, he at first claims it was his son's fault and he was unworthy, but he eventually has a Heel Realization, saves his son, and stops his plan.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic goes even deeper. Lightning Dust is the Jerk Justifier. Do your best, disregard the rest? Her. So what if anyone else gets hurt? Rainbow Dash is not pleased.

Perhaps the best example of this character on The Simpsons is Montgomery Burns. A sociopathic industrialist, he has no qualms about resorting to all kinds of crimes - including murder - in order to succeed in business (and, in fact, advises a classroom full of students to forget about romantic attachment and even disown their own families in order to not be distracted from making money). Yet Mr. Burns is arguably a deconstruction: he's a physically feeble and borderline senile elderly man, depending heavily on his personal assistant Smithers, his hired goons and his gang of evil lawyers to do his dirty work. Never more blatant than in an episode showing what happened to him and Abraham "Grampa" Simpson during World War II; marooned together on a tropical island in the Pacific, Burns insists that the two of them not struggle for survival as equals, but fight like animals to determine who is superior, with the loser becoming the winner's servant. Abe immediately kicks his ass.

Jasper from Steven Universe believes in this life style. Though as evolution is not a part of Gem biology, she instead has an intense hatred for deformed Gems including Amethyst to the point of attempting to shatter her, even after she proved she was no threat to Jasper. She is taken down with a combination of the "weaker characters team up" and the "disabled character shows them up" variant by Steven and Amethyst fusing to form Smoky Quartz.

Real Life

Nazi Germany famously used social Darwinism to justify various atrocities and as part of their propaganda. A quote attributed to Hitler was: "Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong." He carried this to its logical conclusion when he lost: because Germany's enemies won, he thought that they were obviously superior racially, so he tried to destroy Germany itself in the last months of the war. Thankfully, saner heads prevailed and his orders weren't carried out.

Deconstructed with the Southern states of America that formed the Confederacy. Slaveholders tried to justify their actions by declaring Africans to be an inferior race, with Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens even saying that his "country" was built on this "great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." As soon as the Union defeated the Confederacy, however, the Southerners despaired at the damage done to the land and mourned the "lost cause of the South." Fearful of the newly freed slaves, many wasted no time in trying to restrict their economic and political rights. Social Darwinism was quickly tossed aside when the Southerners realized they could actually be the losing side. They mostly justified slavery and later segregation based on the Bible note or at least a specific interpretation that other denominations considered a load of dingo's kidneys , claiming black people were made by God to be their slave (or at least servant) race, not that scientific racism was never trotted out too for this purpose.

Sparta. Eugenics was already practiced (before the advent of biological science) by leaving defective and sick babies to die. Think of your childhood consisting of pain (no changing clothes, fighting against your best friends, usually to death, you are encouraged to steal, but if you get caught you were punished... not for stealing, but for getting caught, and finally being dumped in the wilderness, etc). Adulthood was extremely military, and the extreme views of Spartan society have given them an almost mythical reputation in history. Ultimately it undid them because they were limited in number to at most a few thousand of them and the loss of even a few hundred warriors was a major blow to them. So they quickly reached their maximum extent.

The other reason Sparta collapsed was much simpler. Their society's very survival depended upon a reliable supply of slave-labor. If there was a slave-revolt (which happened quite frequently), Spartan soldiers would need to quickly abandon the battlefield and rush back home to quell it, or else their state would swiftly have collapsed.

The Vitality Curve strategy in corporation HR, or "rank and yank", where 10% of the work force is sacked every year to get rid of the worst performing employees (similar to what Mitch & Murray tried to do). In reality, after a couple of years, you tend to run out of genuinely incompetent staff and are left with what essentially becomes Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder, and continuing this policy leads to unnecessary corporate politicking and significant problems with workplace morale and performance instead of improvements in the workforce. Enron was one corporation that implemented this policy, creating a culture where presenting an appearance of success became far more important than actually serving the best interests of the company.

There are a few hundred editions of old medical, anthropological, and sociological treatises and textbooks (debunked, naturally, since the 1930s or so) that held that Europeans constituted some sort of 'Master Race' and that this was all 'proved' by their economic development (Industrial Revolution and all that) and success in declaring protectorates over areas like Sub-Saharan Africa where there were few-to-no ethnic Europeans. Which European 'race' was the Master Race, on the other hand, was up for spirited debate.

Eric Harris, one of the two Columbine shooters, believed wholeheartedly in this trope, going so far as to write the words "Natural Selection" on a t-shirt he wore the day of the massacre.

Alternative Title(s):Social Darwinist, The Eugenicist, The Strong Should Dominate The Weak, Social Darwinism, Social Darvinist, Social Darwinists

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